When I was little, the only tefillin I saw were in a bag in my grandparents' spare bedroom, and I didn't know what they were, just that they were my zadie's.
I learned to lay tefillin as an adult; I bought my own first pair and then a similar pair as an engagement present for the man I married (his were old bar-mitzvah ones); a few years later we had children. It's good I already knew what I was doing, because laying tefillin has to be fast when little kids are running around, and breastfeeding with tefillin on (especially on the same side as the shel yad) is tricky. We won't even get into the difficulties of serial tefillin-laying because one parent has to be available at all times to whisk the potty-training toddler into the bathroom! But my babies loved to play with my tefillin, and my younger child still loves to play with the empty cases and the dangling straps from my shel rosh. Several years ago I bought a set of toy tefillin for them, which have mostly been destroyed; I keep meaning to repair them or make another one. But my oldest child is five, so it'll be awhile before they're interested in the real thing. When they get old enough, I'll guess I'll either wait till they ask (it might come up at school) or till they're 10 or 11 or so and then I'll start showing them step by step. Gender is not an issue except that it means my daughter can be bat mitzvah at 12. We do have my husband's set of old bar mitzvah tefillin that they can learn with, and we'll give them each their own set -- in an industrial-strength tfidanit -- as a pre-bar/bat mitzvah present.
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I learned to lay tefillin as an adult; I bought my own first pair and then a similar pair as an engagement present for the man I married (his were old bar-mitzvah ones); a few years later we had children. It's good I already knew what I was doing, because laying tefillin has to be fast when little kids are running around, and breastfeeding with tefillin on (especially on the same side as the shel yad) is tricky. We won't even get into the difficulties of serial tefillin-laying because one parent has to be available at all times to whisk the potty-training toddler into the bathroom! But my babies loved to play with my tefillin, and my younger child still loves to play with the empty cases and the dangling straps from my shel rosh. Several years ago I bought a set of toy tefillin for them, which have mostly been destroyed; I keep meaning to repair them or make another one. But my oldest child is five, so it'll be awhile before they're interested in the real thing. When they get old enough, I'll guess I'll either wait till they ask (it might come up at school) or till they're 10 or 11 or so and then I'll start showing them step by step. Gender is not an issue except that it means my daughter can be bat mitzvah at 12. We do have my husband's set of old bar mitzvah tefillin that they can learn with, and we'll give them each their own set -- in an industrial-strength tfidanit -- as a pre-bar/bat mitzvah present.